


johndave drabbles

by 2x2verse (agent_florida)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Anal Sex, Dialogue Heavy, Dialogue-Only, Frottage, M/M, Podfic, Shameless Smut, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 10:30:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 12,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/747496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_florida/pseuds/2x2verse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a collection of johndave scattered oneshots to mirror my now-deleted tumblr</p><p>ch. 3 now includes podfic. you're welcome</p><p>"chose not to use archive warnings" because in a few of these they're only 15 whoops</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first time John told Dave he loved him, it was because of a blowjob.

He was fifteen years old and at his first party and he might have had a sip of Rose’s mom’s whatever that was but it was just a sip and he was still very much in control of his faculties thank you very much. Obviously, this was why he was making so many egregious typos in his text messages to Dave.

EB: dabe.  
EB: daaaaaaaaaavr.  
TG: whaddaya want shitfaced  
EB: i amn nit shit faaced!  
TG: your hands beg to differ  
EB: i wnannanted to text you somethign realy imporetant.  
EB: dave.,.,  
EB: dave i rally resdflly like you.  
EB: like i wasnna kiss uou and sfuff.  
TG: love you too babe  
EB: no imn srrious!!!  
TG: you n me can be a thing  
TG: happy hangin out in limbo  
TG: where weve been for the past three years  
EB: what is a think?  
TG: what the fuck do you think asshole  
TG: tell you what  
TG: get your ass over here  
TG: and ill show you what a thing is

Maybe his fine motor control left a little to be desired, but he was still one hundred percent in control of his mental faculties. He wasn’t slurring his words — his texts just made him look drunk. Right? And besides, wasn’t that what best bros were supposed to do? He’d just make out with Dave for a little while.

It only just occurred to him, when he was stepping onto the Lalonde transportalizer with Rose about to hit send, that this line of thinking was probably really, really gay.

Dave was waiting for him on the other end. The second he materialized, the other boy gripped him on the shoulders, yanked him close, and planted a big wet one right on his mouth. It was decidedly unromantic and not in the least bit sexy, and all it really did for John was make him laugh. “Come on, Dave —”

Dave came on, all right. This time was a little better, more like an actual kiss, and if John’s heart could slow down for a second, he might have reflected on the fact that it was his first one. Or, at least, his first French kiss, because Dave was pushing his tongue into John’s mouth and there was some kind of squeaky noise that John was loath to assign blame to.

If John hadn’t been drunk before, he was certainly drunk now. The sensation was nearly overwhelming. The cotton of Dave’s shirt was soft, his skin even softer when he pushed up the bottom hem. Walking was a thing both of them were trying to do, but between Dave tripping as he stepped backwards and John stumbling from a lack of coordination, it was a hot mess. Once they were firmly inside Dave’s room, though, John shut the door. No one else got to see. Especially when he pulled back and Dave’s cheeks were red under the bottom frame of his aviators and his lips were swollen and glossy — no, no one else got to see him like that from now on.

Dave took his shirt off first, throwing it aside before kissing at John again, his mouth and his jawline and he swiped his tongue across John’s stubble as John dug his fingernails into Dave’s shoulders. “Can’t stand,” he mumbled now that his mouth was free, and Dave wasn’t supporting him, either, just pushing his hands under John’s shirt and pulling up and twisting at his nipples as they passed.

When he stumbled backwards, his knees hit the side of Dave’s mattress, and he sat with a whump as Dave pulled off his shirt. Then it wasn’t just his jaw Dave was kissing, but his neck, nipping at it a little, and his collarbone, and his chest, and running his teeth along Dave’s nipple just hard enough to make his skin prickle. All of it was tightening John’s pants, and he felt dizzy. Dave was something to hold onto. He tried to grab Dave’s hands, but Dave shied away, so he had to make do with his shoulders instead as Dave kissed and licked and sucked his way down John’s body, practically nuzzling his face in John’s happy trail before —

“Those are my pants, dude.”

“Sure are,” was Dave’s cocky reply. Yeah, John could see why Dave wanted his hands free, because deft fingers were undoing his button and unzipping his fly and yet before there was touching Dave palmed at the bulge in John’s jeans and pushed his tongue into John’s navel.

John had never been more helplessly turned on in his entire life. “This?” he asked breathlessly. “This is a thing?”

“No,” Dave said quietly, and his voice was low and husky in a way John didn’t recognize. It was unbearably hot, especially when Dave looked up at him over the rims of his shades, those red, lust-blown eyes and those golden eyelashes and then that smirk, that smirk that left Dave’s canine just digging into his plush, slick lips. “ _This_  is a thing.”

He fisted his hands at John’s hips, bunching up the fabric in his grip, and John raised himself a little from the bed so Dave could pull it all down. His boner popped out, and John heard himself saying “don’t look, oh my  _god_ ,” because this was suddenly getting very gay and full of  _feelings_  and his hard-on was just waving out in the air with a little smear of precum at the tip and Dave was just staring at it and licking his lips and John had never felt more uncomfortable, more scrutinized, more judged than in that one moment.

“Fine,” Dave said, rolling his shoulders under John’s hands. “I won’t look.” He grabbed at a tie off the floor of his room — why was Dave’s floor his closet? what a mess — took off his shades and set them on the bed beside John, and then carefully, deliberately, looked straight into John’s eyes before he hid his own eyes from view.

“Jesus,” John breathed. Good thing Dave was blindfolding himself, because he could feel his cock twitch just at the sight of him doing it.

Dave put his hands on the edge of the mattress. John grabbed for them, threading their fingers together, as Dave knelt in front of John, encouraging him to spread his legs a little. The only reason he did was because Dave couldn’t see how desperate he was, how he scooted a little closer to the edge just so he could get his hips closer to Dave’s face. Dave laid his mouth on the inside of John’s thigh, not seeming to care that his tongue was tracing over hair as well as skin, and John felt like Dave’s mouth was tracing a hot line all over his body, burning even after the sensation left.

And then Dave’s mouth was on his dick. Not really on-on, but it was there all the same. “Whoa,” was John’s immediate reaction. He’d never thought of what a mouth would feel like there, not even if it was a girl’s mouth, not even when he was trying to get off — and now it was Dave, mouthy Dave, nattering Dave, can’t-shut-up-worth-shit Dave, silent because he had John Egbert’s cock on his lips.

He licked them, getting them a little wet, and then turned his head sideways just a little, just enough so he could run his mouth over the back side of it. Dave was just rubbing against it for now, and it was just about all John could handle. But then a blinded Dave tore away from his ministrations for a few seconds to tilt his head up, as if he were looking into John’s eyes, and his “let me” sounded more like begging than demanding.

Oh. Oh, that was. Oh. This was a  _thing_. This was  _the_  thing. This was going to be  _their_  thing. Two best bros who do everything together and give each other blowjobs and they were going to upgrade this to sex, weren’t they, and there would be two dicks and two guys and it was going to be gay and frankly John  _didn’t give one single iota of a shit_. If there was anyone he trusted with everything, it was Dave. He trusted him with this, too. “Do it,” he insisted, and the commanding tone in his own voice was foreign to him.

Dave Strider put his lips on the head of John’s dick and opened his mouth around him as he shifted down and pressed his tongue against his frenum and holy shit Dave Strider was sucking him off. He was sucking, definitely, his cheeks hollowing as he bobbed right back off again. “Holy shit,” he gasped out once his mouth was empty.

Oh. Oh, God, he didn’t like it, thought John tasted and smelled and felt disgusting, and John was oh so very glad Dave was blindfolded because it meant his best friend didn’t see the flush spreading all the way from the tips of his ears to his shoulders. “Bad, huh.” It wasn’t going to work.

“No.” And then Dave did something John hadn’t heard him do in a long time: he chuckled. “No, not holy shit bad. Holy shit good, John, holy shit do you taste good, I’m gonna —”

And then there was no more what he was going to do, and it was all what he was doing, right then, bobbing his head up and down as he worked John’s dick inside his mouth. Sometimes he twisted his head from side to side, and John liked that. Sometimes he curled his tongue around the head, and John liked that, too. He liked pretty much everything about this, actually. “Dave,” he said, and he was surprised at the genuine affection in his tone.

Dave let him fall out of his mouth, but not for want of giving him attention. No, instead he worked his tongue flat against John’s sensitives, coating him with spit, and oh God Dave Strider was literally getting his dick wet. He felt like he was going to burst, and he put his weight on his hands as he leaned back a little, let his head fall back, and then —

“That’s my balls.”

The idiot had actually taken one of them into his mouth. Wow, that was disgusting. How could he even — but Dave licked him with his tongue with the heat of his mouth around him and coherent thought fell out of his head. If Dave liked it, he was cool with it. Plus, it felt… a little more than okay. He could get used to that.

What he wanted right now, though, was for Dave to get back to polishing him. “Get your mouth on my —” he had time to say, before his throat closed up in a moan as Dave sucked him in with perfect glossy blowjob lips and got them as far down his dick as he could. Fuck, that felt good. Too good, because as Dave kept bobbing and nodding and licking and sucking John felt his toes curling in and felt a tightness in his stomach and he knew it was coming, had to say something, “Dave, fuck, I’m gonna —”

Dave pulled off, a thin string of saliva still connecting his lips to the head of John’s cock. It was utterly pornographic for John to see his best friend looking like that, debauched because of him. “Huh?” he muttered.

John came all over his face. He’d never come so hard in his life. Thick spurts of jizz landed on Dave’s forehead, his cheek, the shell of his ear, his hair, and oh my God into his mouth, his open mouth with his tongue curled in like he was looking forward to it, oh God, and that sight just kept it going for far longer than it should have.

There was a lot of heavy breathing for a few moments. Dave sniffled a little, but didn’t make a move to clean himself off. “Give a guy some warning, can’t you?”

John could tell he didn’t really mean it in a mean way, though. “I didn’t do it in your mouth,” he mumbled right back, but now he was wondering if he should have, because Dave looked so messy right now, his cum was everywhere on his best friend’s face, and John really shouldn’t have been enjoying that sight quite so much. “You look like a Go-Gurt exploded on your face, dude.”

“Keep it up, I’ll wipe it off on your pants.” It was an empty threat, though, because Dave got up to grab the tissues from his nightstand and started rubbing one on his cheek to get the gunk off.

When he turned his hips, John could see a definite wet splotch over the front of Dave’s black jeans. Should he have done something to help? He’d been holding Dave’s hands the entire time, Dave couldn’t have — but the sheepish grin Dave gave him when he saw where John’s eyes were just confirmed what he thought. “Seriously?”

“Yup,” Dave confirmed. “That good.”

And he didn’t even seem the least bit fazed by what just happened, even though there was still spunk in the part of his hair and he’d come in his pants just by blowing John. “I love you,” he blurted out.

“I know,” was Dave’s quiet response, and with the way he smiled, John wanted to yank it off his face and put it in a paper bag and huff it behind the bleachers during the homecoming football game.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> johndave + "milkshake"

The two of you are sitting on the curb, rubber of your sneakers melting into the asphault, as you try to eat your treats from Dairy Queen before they melt. “Hey, how come you never get milkshakes?” you ask him conversationally.

He turns his head. Glare flits across his shades. It seems ominous enough, and then Dave intones, “It’s because I don’t want to look like I have cum all over my face.” He thumps you on the back while you have your straw in your mouth, and it jostles out, spurting vanilla milkshake all over your face. “The look on your fuckin’ face, dude,” he caws, and just when you’re trying to wipe it off with your thumb the flash on his phone camera goes off.

“Oh, no way. No way are you putting that on fucking eBubbles or whatever —” But the way he grins at you is confirmation enough. “Oh, fuck you,” you mutter, but really, you’re more impressed than anything. He’s starting to learn how to prank. He’s learning it from you. And it’s really, really cute.

(Later, when he actually shows you the photo, you have to admit that it looks like he blew a fat load on your face. It got on the front of your glasses, on your cheeks, on your chin, everywhere. And he caught you just right so that your eyes are half-lidded, looking straight at the camera, tongue just darting out to lick a little on the tip of your thumb. It’s pornographic, is what it is. And you look really hot.)

“No, really, though,” you say, wiping your face and glasses with a napkin. “Why don’t you ever get milkshakes?”

“They don’t come in cherry.” His voice is flat, discouraging further questions.

Of course, you prod him further. “What’s so important about cherry?”

Dave lets out a little sigh through his nose, just staring at his Dilly Bar. “She, uh. She always used to say I smelled like cherry.”

“Oh.” You really shouldn’t have asked. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say you’re sorry,” Dave says vehemently. “Don’t fucking pity me.”

Because that’s what she used to do, before she died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops surprise daverezi sadstuck


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dom!dave talking down to sub!john

“i never got to be the hero, you were always the goddamn hero, perfect john the heir of breath the god among boys”

“well how do you feel now huh”

“how do you feel bitch”

“dont cry at me use your words”

“youre not a hero john, you never were, you have no idea what i went through, how many times i died trying to save you, and what do i get for it”

“ingratitude”

“fucking ingratitude”

“what do you say”

“i said what do you say”

“say it louder”

“thats damn right, thank you dave, because without me our session would have fallen apart”

“and youre gonna make it up to me right”

“i said youre gonna make it up to me right”

“open your mouth, i hope you choke”

“yeah theres some fucking gratitude right there”

“what do you say”

“dont talk with your mouth full you filthy whore”

“what do you say”

“dont make me smack you again”

“thats right, im sorry”

“open your mouth again, im not done with you”

“you dont know the meaning of sorry”

“you dont know the meaning of thank you”

“heres how you say thank you, swallow it, bitch”

“you dont even know, you dont know the fucking meaning of sorry, you think youre sorry but you have no idea”

“im gonna teach you what sorry means, spread your legs you slut”

“now what do you say”

“wrong, youre not sorry, you say please”

“youre gonna beg me”

“youre gonna beg for my forgiveness”

“now what do you say”

“i didnt hear you”

“oh yeah youre just asking for it”

“you really think two fingers is the meaning of sorry”

“you are so fucking pathetic this still isnt sorry”

“what do you say”

“what do you say john”

“who are you begging from”

“say my name slut”

“please dave, please dave, fuck look at you, youre a fucking mess”

“are you ready to apologize”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: so john and dave are studying and then dave is like "let's get frisky" and then john is all "no man do you want me to fail i gotta study bro" and then dave is all like "come on let's make out man" and then dave kisses him and then wahoo! dry humping

He kisses your neck again. “Dave, I told you to stop.”

“I got distracted.” He says it in that oh-shucks tone that makes you want to slap him and kiss him simultaneously. “Please?”

“No, oh my God, I have a chem test tomorrow and I don’t wanna fail it.”

“You’d be studying just fine with me.” Dave kisses your neck again, rubs at your shoulders. He knees aside the textbook you had on your lap and just plops himself down there instead. Ugh. “Hormones are chemistry, right?”

“Maybe in your messed-up little world.” You turn to the side, start leafing through your notes again, but Dave drags his lips up from the base of your throat to just below your ear. “Dave.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t pull that innocent thing with me.”

“Please?” Okay, that’s the second time in two minutes he’s said that.

“Are you just horny constantly or what?”

“You got me.” He crawls closer in your lap, grinds down on you, and he’s hard already. “Sorry,” he says, in that tone that means he’s absolutely not sorry whatsoever.

How is he already hard? “You’re like a dog,” you joke with him, but you turn away from your work and tangle your hands in his hair anyway. You don’t need his shades off to know that his eyes are smiling; his mouth is quirked up in a smirk that you know is a genuine grin. “You could just hump my leg and get off.”

“Can I hump you? Pretty please.” When he pouts, you bite at his lower lip, sucking it into your mouth. Dave’s blabber cuts off into a moan, and he drops his hips to grind against you—he’s hard already, god damn it, and at the rate you’re going, taking into account your teenage-boy enthusiasm, you’re not going to be far behind.

You just kiss him, sliding your tongue into his mouth, and he does this thing, this really endearing thing where he just opens for you and lets you, still touching his tongue to yours, and you love the way he kisses you, the way his mouth slips against yours as his breath hitches. His hands come up in little claws, trying to dig into your shoulders through the cotton of your shirt. “Good?”

“Yeah.” He ruts down again, his mouth slipping away from yours just so he can gasp. You love every single noise out of his throat. “Yeah, that’s—that’s good, Egbert—“

All the words fall out of his brain when you rock up against him. There’s a definite bulge in your pants now. “I can’t even study with you without you needing to make out with me,” you mutter against him, but not in a mean way. It’s nice, breaking things up like this, nicer still that he’s the one you’re making out with.

He rolls his hips, and you snap yours up, and both of you make a needy noise at the same time that you swallow out of each other’s mouths. Dave tastes good, so good, and you’re thirsty, and his hands have slipped down from your shoulders to the point where his fingertips are dawdling on the insides of your wrists and you can’t articulate how good it feels, how it’s sending sizzles of electricity down your sides, so you tip your fingers up, do the same to him, and he actually cries out, his eyebrows furrowing as he makes this sweet, delicious noise that tastes good as you run your tongue over his adam’s apple.

You rock up, and Dave rolls down, and there’s friction, and some desperate kind of neediness that can only come from two pent-up fifteen-year-old boys trying to stay quiet in a bedroom when a parent is downstairs. Dave grabs at your hands like they’re a lifeline, threads his fingers with yours, presses your foreheads together, and you can feel his panting against the lips he’s just bruised with the force of his kisses.

And he just ruts faster, and faster, and you can feel the bulge in his jeans, just like he can feel the hardness in your shorts, and they’re rubbing against one another, and fuck, it’s so good, so good, and you swear you can smell the cotton of his shirt and the salt-tang of his sweat and the smoke smell that clings to his skin and his deodorant, as weird as that sounds, and you just keep moving your hips, it’s the only thing that feels right, the only thing you know how to do, and you’re both losing your cool and flushing red in the face under the rims of your glasses and panting hard and getting harder and—

“John,” Dave says, low and quiet, like you just punched him in the stomach, and that single noise tears you apart, gets you dropping a load in your shorts, and you’re not even embarrassed, too turned on to be, because when you look down, there’s a damp patch at the front of Dave’s jeans, too.

Dave goes home wearing a pair of your pants. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dialog-only, dave's a vampire

“Say it.”

“I’m not fucking saying it, Dave.”

 _“Say it._ ”

“… Metro-pire.”

“How do I still get boners when you’re this fucking awful?”

“Beats me, how do you still get bloodflow to your dick when you’re dead?”

“By sucking all the life out of you.”

“Oh. Oh my god Dave.”

“Tell me if it hurts.”

“Oh. Oh fuck. Dave oh my god.”

“Good, right? Two nice little punctures right there on your throat. Such pretty blood you have, my dear.”

“You’re a vampire, not a werewolf.”

“Egbert, shut up or I’ll drink you dry.”

“You’ll be drinking my dick dry in a minute, is what you’ll be doing. Oh. Oh my god don’t stop.”

“Gotta lick you clean. And now that I’m not so hungry, I’m gonna show you how I can still get hard-ons when I’m half-dead.”

“Oh my god Dave that isn’t fair you’re so cold—oh. Oh, do that thing again, with your hand—“

“Fuck, you’re pulsing. You feel like you’re burning up.”

“That’s because you have ice-fingers on my dick.”

“And you like it, from the feel of it. Wonder how you’ll feel with my mouth.”

“Dave, I swear to God if you use your teeth—oh. Oh my fucking. Shit, holy shit, Dave, wow, fuck—“

“Shut up, I’m trying to concentrate.”

“Get your mouth back on my cock. Shit, Dave, oh my God—I need to. Let me fuck you.”

“Egbert, my chocolate starfish needs a little bit more prep than okay that’s really fucking cold can you not.”

“You’re the one who’s freezing! It’s just lube, lighten up—or keep—keep sucking my dick, yeah, oh my God—“

“Gimme another, another finger, or stop making those noises because I’m right there with you about wanting you to jam your dick in my butt.”

“Jelly.”

“What?”

“Jelly. Look. KY Jelly.”

“Don’t pull this fucking prankster shit on me when I’m trying to—oh my god John right there right there that’s it don’t fucking stop why did you stop.”

“Because I need to jelly my cock up your ass or so help me God I swear I’m going to die.”

“Shut up and fuck me. You sound like a moron with your mouth open.”

“Says the guy who—ooh. Who literally, physically cannot shut up to save his life.”

“Hey, I thought you liked it when I talked during sex, babe.”

“Call me babe one more time and I’m going to cut the arms off your precious starfish.”

“Fuck, at this point? Go ahead, fuck, fuck me—oh God. John oh fuck oh fuck.”

“Like that?”

“Harder. Move—aah. Yeah.”

“Better?”

“Angle, yeah. Oh. Oh fuck. Don’t fucking bite me—“

“Want you to see how it feels for me when you’re getting dinner from my neck.”

“And I also don’t want to give you fucking undead herpes, okay? Why did you stop moving oh my God move or I’m going to fucking murder you.”

“What’s so bad about me being a vampire too?”

“This isn’t fun, John.”

“Ooh, serious first name and everything.”

“Stop—oh. Stop that, I’m trying—oh my god. I’m trying to actually talk to you.”

“While I’m trying to fuck you?”

“John. I don’t want you catching this from me. Don’t bite. Don’t break the skin. Don’t touch my blood. I don’t want you having the taint.”

“Hehe. Taint.”

“Shut up. Oh. Oh, like that, right—oh, you had it, go back—“

“Does it feel good when I do that?”

“Yeah. Yeah, right up against that—“

“Hitting into your hot spot every time?”

“Fuck Egbert don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop fuck me keep talking fuck me fuck me fuck me—“

“God, your dick is ice-cold, what the hell.”

“Yeah, jerk me, oh fuck—“

“Wanna see it, Dave, wanna see you cum, not gonna stop ‘til I see you cum—“

“More, just a little—more, oh fuck—John, John, John—“

“Oh my god Dave I’m gonna cum in you.”

“Do it, wanna feel it—oh my fucking Christ, John, that’s hot.”

“Dave.”

“Don’t just flop on me. Get out.”

“Dave.”

“What.”

“I have a serious question.”

“What now, Egbert?”

“If you’re undead, do you still shit?”

“I’m going to shit your own cum out into your shoes.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> contains blowjobs and pizza

“How long did he say?” John asked as Dave put down his phone.

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Oh  _hell yes_.” Just enough time. John launched himself off the couch, threw his controller towards Dave’s flatscreen, and moved himself to kneel between Dave’s legs.

”Okay, uh. Whoa there.  _Arrete_ , dude, what the hell?” Still, Dave didn’t exactly stop John when he started undoing the button and zip of his jeans.

“Fifteen minutes,” John said slowly, looking up into Dave’s face over the rim of his glasses and waggling his eyebrows so hard he thought they were going to fly off his forehead, “is just enough time for me to  _blow your mind_.”

“Hey, Egbert, uh.” Dave trailed off as John started pushing up his shirt, planting kisses down his stomach, licked along the side of his trail. “I don’t exactly.” Hah, it was fun for John to make Dave cut off his sentences like that, even more fun to have Dave lose his self-control and run his fingers through John’s hair as his mouth kept moving down. “Have the stamina of a rabbit in heat, so you’re not gonna.” At this point, John was getting Dave naked below the waist, and Dave was being nothing but helpful, lifting his hips and letting his jeans and boxers pool down around his ankles. “Be doing anything you can finish in fifteen minutes.”

“You so sure about that?” Dave wasn’t exactly hard, but that had never deterred John before. To tease Dave, he ran his tongue along the entire length, making sure to get his dick nice and wet. “You never last when I blow you.”

“You have precisely thirteen minutes and twenty-one seconds to get me to come,” Dave told John, but his voice was a little too breathy to be entirely formal.

“Or what?”

“Or you’re paying.”

“Game on.” John didn’t waste any time, just laid his hands on Dave’s knees and started licking at his dick like he meant it. Teasing. That’s how he had to do this first part. With every little swipe of his tongue, he could feel Dave throbbing against his mouth, until hey, what do you know, he was mostly hard, hard enough to really suck. “How much time?”

“A little—nnh—less than ten minutes.” Dave’s cock twitched, looking eager to get back under the slick heat of John’s mouth.

John just rolled his eyes, pretending to abandon his pursuit by sitting back on his heels and merely rubbing his hands up and down Dave’s thighs. It didn’t exactly help that his thumbs were also rubbing little circles on his inner thighs, getting tantalizingly close to his groin before drawing away. “You know exactly how much time is left and you know it.”

“And you’re losing time, asshole, get to it.”

“How long do I have?”

Dave had kept his time abilities after the game. John knew that, inside his mind, little gears were working perfectly in sync to keep him painfully aware, at all moments, of what time it was, how long since and how long until. “Nine minutes and two seconds—”

John rewarded him by lunging forward and sinking his mouth down over Dave’s cock. It felt so good to draw that strangled moan out of his throat, to feel Dave’s legs tense underneath his hold. It was almost getting to the point where Dave was about to thrust, but John couldn’t have that, now, could he? When Dave threatened to buck, John just held down his hips with large, hot hands, and it was so gratifying to feel Dave’s everything twitch in his grasp. “A little greedy, don’t you think?”

“Just get me off and we can call this over.”

“Maybe not.” John darted his tongue out to lick away a bead of Dave’s precum, but didn’t do anything else; he watched as a tremor went up Dave’s spine, could swear he saw the little hairs on the back of Dave’s neck standing on end. “Maybe I’ll just edge you. I have money. I don’t mind paying.”

“Don’t fucking do that to me, John.” Ooh, first name territory. Dave was getting serious about this.

“But I know you like it!” John just smiled up at him, with that prankster’s grin he knew drove Dave crazy. “You know I’m amazing at blowing things.”

“Yes, very funny joke about your aspect, I get it, you’re the worst ever. You have six minutes and fifty-one seconds to get me to nut down your throat—ohmygodJohndon’tstop.”

John had taken Dave’s cock in his mouth, slid his lips down as far as he could bear, and his throat was spasming around the head of his dick. He couldn’t hold it there, Dave knew that—being deprived of his aspect left him feeling off for days on end—but it was still nice to feel him squirm. John popped off, breathing hard, but instead started landing sucking kisses on the underside of Dave’s shaft, tracing a vein with his tongue. “Don’t choke me tonight, okay?”

“Yes, sir.” Oh fuck why did he have to say that. Now John was throbbing in his pants. He had to take a hand away from Dave’s hips to massage at his own cock with the palm of his hand, but nothing he was doing gave him any meaningful relief. “Tomorrow?”

“How much time do I have left?”

“Five minutes and ten seconds.”

“Maybe,” was John’s answer to Dave’s question. “If—” He trailed off, but only to curl his head around Dave’s corona, massage the tip of it against his frenum.

“If what, John, I’ll do anything.”

“Then don’t cum until after the pizza’s here.”

“I fucking hate you.”

“You don’t.”

“No, I don’t, now get your mouth back on my—ahhhhnnnnnghhhh…”

God, Dave always made the best noises when he was turned on. John could do almost anything to him right now, and the power made him feel a little delirious—or maybe that was because his bloodflow was being directed away from his brainpan and towards his other head. It was too enjoyable to take Dave in his mouth, purse his lips around his shaft, and suck, hard, hollowing his cheeks and practically wringing beads of precum out of his dick only so he could dutifully lick them away.

Still, John wasn’t superhuman, and he couldn’t always hold his jaw open for as long as he wanted to. “Oh, come on,” Dave groaned above him when John went back to lapping at his shaft, “I’m not gonna last for two and a half minutes, fuck…”

“That’s how much time we have?” John pulled back, let his breath fog around the head of Dave’s dick, thoroughly enjoyed the way it pulsed from want of meaningful contact.

“Okay, two minutes and nineteen seconds—don’t, ugh, don’t—”

There was a simple word Dave could say and John would immediately stop. Dave wasn’t anywhere close to using it, even in the aroused verbiage-mash that was coming out of his mouth right now—John could see the way his muscles were tensing under his skin, nearly smell how turned on he was right now, could even taste it when he licked even more precum away. “You’re going to last.”

“Why?” Dave sounded so beautifully desperate, even though it was more like he was just whining to get his way.

“Because,” John said to him quietly, “you like seeing me submit to you. You like the feel of my pulse under your fingers when you close your hands around my throat and squeeze. And you’re not going to get that unless you stop yourself.”

“Fuck,” Dave whispered, and John knew. Checkmate. It wasn’t exactly true, though. Both of them knew who really had the power in this relationship, which one of them fell better into which role, and even though John had used the s-word that wasn’t really where his strengths lay.

He much preferred this: doing things to Dave, pushing him beyond the limits of his own self-control and showing him what his body was capable of, controlling his every movement by working him up until a simple puff of his breath against Dave’s heated skin would be enough to work him up into a full-body spasm. “Not yet,” he murmured against his hip, leaning in to bite it playfully. “Not quite yet.”

“I only—fuck—have to last another—fuck, shit, fucking shit, John—fucking—minute and some, Jesus Christ that feels so good—”

John pulled off again, just at the point where he was getting to a nice bobbing rhythm. The strangled sound coming out of Dave’s throat made it totally worth it. “Remember that time, last month, when you got a disturbance of the peace notice in the mail?”

“What about it?”

“Do you really want this pizza to cost five hundred dollars?”

“Shut the fuck up—” John did so, sinking down onto Dave’s dick again. By his reckoning, they had less than a minute left of this little game. “Oh, oh god, John, don’t stop, don’t fucking stop—”

There was a knock on the apartment door. John let his mouth hang open, murmuring around little sucking kisses to Dave’s dick. “You wanna get that?”

“It’s open!” Dave hollered instead.

Oh, no. Oh, that blistering fuckheel. Because from the front door of the apartment, the delivery guy would see—was seeing right now—the little scene on the couch. Dave got his fingers in John’s hair, tugged down so hard and sharply John gagged around his dick in the back of his mouth, but God bless him, Dave hadn’t come yet. “I, uh,” John could vaguely hear from the direction of the door.

“Wallet’s on the bookcase,” Dave told the guy. “Take a nice fat tip.”

That was John’s wallet. Whatever. He’d won, and that was the important part. And now their apartment was stinking like pepperoni and garlic and there was nothing he wanted more than to have something in his mouth—

The instant the delivery guy slammed the door, Dave promptly dropped a load down John’s throat. “Fuck, fuck, so fucking good,” was falling from his lips, and John basked in the phrase, sucking him dry for all he was worth, swallowing even though he hated the taste and the feel of it.

It ended with both of them gasping for breath, looking debauched but in totally different ways. John’s hair was disheveled, his glasses askew, lips glossy and nearly bruised, a string of jizz at the corner of his mouth that he frantically wiped away; Dave was a hot mess, skin flushed, dick still idly twitching, showcasing love bites from his navel to the tops of his thighs. “Sorry,” John said softly, reaching up to massage at one of the angry purpling marks with his thumb.

“Ow, that hurts, dicklick.” A surprisingly apropos disparaging cutesy name. “Go get the pizza.”

“What, you too fuck-dazed to move?” Dave just grumbled something in response. “Never let it be said that I’m not occasionally your little bitch,” John complained. It smelled so fucking good, and he needed to get that bitter, salty taste out of the back of his throat, so he took a slice, started eating it, while he brought the box to the coffee table.

“Did you just take the first slice?”

“Needed something to wash your cum down my throat.” John only sounded a little hoarse. Not bad, for fifteen minutes of devotion. His dick still chafed a little in his jeans—lack of attention will do that to a guy—but it was mostly gone, thanks to the awful taste of Dave’s spunk. He went to go fetch his wallet from the bookcase near the door— “That guy took all my cash.”

“How much did you have?”

“Three hundred dollars. That was a twelve-dollar pizza.”

Dave just shrugged. John punched him in the shoulder once he got back to the couch. And Dave just picked out the next track for their Mario Kart escapades while his slice of pizza dangled out of his mouth.


	7. i think of when i had none at all

You roll around on the bed for the fifth time in ten minutes. You can’t get comfortable. There’s an itch under your skin. If you don’t get this beat in the computer in the next few minutes, you’re going to lose it, you know it, and John’s blocking your angle at the nightstand, the great hulk lying down next to you and keeping you from getting at your Moleskine full of notes so you can at least get it down analog—

"Dave," John says, almost like he’s just clearing his throat.

Shit. He caught you. You plank immediately, the most uncomfortable you’ve ever been in your life. You’re crawling with creative animus, your ribs are digging into the piece-of-crap mattress, your face can’t find the cool side of the pillow—

"Dave," says John again, turning over to face you. His face looks so different without glasses, shadow playing across his forehead, cheekbones, jawline, eyes set like radioactive azurite and boring straight through you. "Settle down."

"I can’t." So you’re whining. You  _need_  to get up. Things feel  _weird_. “It’s not even two, just let me—”

It’s John’s turn to roll over now. He starts encroaching on your personal space, flinging an arm over your back to keep you right the hell where you are. The heat of his bare chest seeps into your bare side. “No,” he tells you, and buries his nose in your ear.

God damn it. You roll too, to get yourself completely off your belly, and it just means you’re facing John. Cuddling with him, sort of.  _Gaaaaaaaay_. “John Katharine Egbert,” you grumble at him, “get the fuck off me or so help me god—”

"I’ll sing at you," he threatens.

"No," you gasp.

"I’ll do it!"

"No, please, anything—"

"Shh." John brings up his hand to pet clumsily at your rumpled hair. Sometimes you hate this asshole for knowing exactly how to calm you down and make you go to sleep. "I’m gonna sing at you."

"Fine." You love this, you can’t even kid. "What is it tonight."

"Mmh, an old classic. Got it stuck in my head because of Christmas." John pulls you closer so his mouth is at your ear. " _When I’m worried and I can’t sleep, I count my blessings instead of sheep—_ ”

“ _And I fall asleep counting my blessings,_ " you answer him. His voice is warm, his melody effortless. When you slide your hand up his chest, you can feel the breath behind the tone; it’s almost too intimate, terrifyingly so. But the two of you have been sleeping next to each other for ages, best friends that nearly share the same body, yours the heartbeat and his the breath.

“ _When my bankroll is getting small_ ,” he continues, petting along your hair and drawing you closer in his arms, “ _I think of when I had none at all, and I fall asleep holding my blessings._ ”

"That’s not how it goes," you yawn.

“ _I think about my best friend and I make him go to bed_ ,” he insists, lips essentially caressing your earlobe. His voice is stuck as a rumble in his chest, comforting bare skin on bare skin. “ _And then I take his worries and shoo them out his head_. Come on, what are you worried about?”

"I’m going to forget it if I don’t write it down." It sounds really stupid when you say it out loud.

"No, you won’t." John kicks up the blankets, catches some in one of his hands, and draws it up over the two of you. "If it’s that important, it’ll stick around."

You snort out what might be a laugh if you weren’t so bone-deep exhausted. “Just like you.”

"No, just like you." He kisses you, messy-soft, on the rise of your cheekbone. " _When you’re worried and you can’t sleep, just count your blessings instead of sheep_ …”

You fall asleep before he finishes the line, thinking of the range of John’s voice and how you can arrange it over a piano line. When you wake up at the crack of six, it’s laid out in your mind as if you’d written it down in black and white. Good—because what you wanted to write down before you fell asleep was going to be part of his Christmas gift from you, sheet music of an original composition. It’s all here now, tumbling out effortlessly—just like breathing around him.


	8. memorized

He writes it onto you so you won’t forget.

Grabbing the back of your hand to draw a heart in permanent marker, one that stays put no matter how much you try to smudge it. Post-It notes in the lunches he packs for you. Names like  _kitten_ and  _bumblebee_  and  _hummingbird_  that leave your ears tingling.

(you have a tattoo on your shoulder that doesn’t have his name in a heart with a little arrow through it but comes damn sure close, two wavy lines that mean nothing to anyone except for children who lived and then died and then lived again)

In bed at two in the morning, sleepy rumbles against your shoulder as he pulls you close. In bed at two in the afternoon, sweat dripping from his hair onto your chest.

(there is a bite mark at your left hip that won’t fade; you’ll never tell him you aggravate it whenever you can so it stays purple, a flower forever in bloom)

Licked into your collarbone with sloppy precision, traced onto your shaft with the point of his tongue. A frenzied smattering of Morse code in the way he collides with you, short stutter of his hips against yours then long rolling smooth as he finds his movement only to stutter short and stutter again, long long long scratches of his hands at your back, three short kisses to your ravenous mouth and one long kiss to show you he’s just as hungry, an insistent bite just below your adam’s apple cut off too quickly.

(you asked him to cut on you once and he safeworded out but all you wanted him to score was ‘yours’)

Easy tangle of his fingers with yours: when you’re out to breakfast, when you’re fighting over space at the piano, when you’re vaulting up the stairs in lockstep. The tangle of your eyewear on the nightstand—the shock that still settles right in your gut when he looks at you unguarded. Tangle of limbs still lanky from the clinging remnants of adolescence as you try to kick each other off the couch but end up cuddling instead.

(he was embarrassed when he gave you the silver band but not as embarrassed as you when you started wearing it on your left hand with no trace of irony)

The doodle of his fingertips across every part of you that’s bare to him. Stomach when your shirt rides up. Back of your hand most of the time. Ghosting across the back of your neck. Tracing the bones of your ankle when you bring it up to rest at your knee, gap between jeans and socks. On your face, though his drawing is shakier there—not because you tremble, oh no, couldn’t be.

(he fucks it into you each time so frantically it’s like he’s genuinely afraid you won’t remember)

He connects the dots between the freckles on your back like he could create new constellations under your skin. Certainly feels like stars are bursting there. He gives you a new Zodiac to learn: Yemaja, he calls one, then Orunmila, Oxosi, Oya, Ozain, Obba, Oshun, Agayu.  _Which one are you?_  you ask him, to which he replies  _Eshu._

 _Is Eshu a douchebag?_  He laughs. His explanation boils down to ‘yes’. The trickster god of your heart, tempting you in the hopes that you will pass through the fire and emerge a changed man.

(he lets you burn but it is the flame that tests the sword, after all, and his is the wind that cools the uncontrollable destructive force you would be without him)

Sometimes you try to write him back, but it always ends in a dividend, investing in him and getting more for your return than you ever expected. You open yourself to him and he takes you places you never imagined, rolling over you like storm clouds over mountaintops, thunder rolling in his chest and lightning striking in your synapses, raining kisses onto your face, neck, shoulders—slack mouth, falling open and trying to form around the one word you want to give him.

 _It’s okay_ , he tells you.  _I know._ And he writes it into you so deep you’ll never be able to redact it out.


	9. albert schweitzer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _albert schweitzer dreaded the thought of receiving christmas gifts because he hated writing thank-you notes._

Dave throws upen the French doors of the piano room with such theatrical force, you’d think he actually had a real reason for wanting to be in here. “Get off,” he tells you, “wanna figure out how to play that.”

"Not hard," you tell him, scooting over on the piano bench. "B-flat minor to A-flat major."

"You’re kidding me," he sighs out, shaking his head.

You noogie him. Has a great sense for interval but not for pitch. He can figure it out from here.You lay out the left-hand roll and he tries—not a third, not a fourth. A sixth. His thumb and middle finger frame it perfectly. Later you’ll kiss every single one of his fingertips, try to massage out the callouses from vinyls with your lips, and he’ll either fishhook you or stroke your tongue with his fingers like he’s trying to coax music out of you. Which it will.

Eventually, when he gets it under his fingers, you frame the first-fifth-first of A-flat major, and he finds this one easily enough, too. The ornamentation comes effortless. He’s not as bad of a pianist as it sounds like when you tease him. “Got it,” he tells you eventually—then when you won’t move over, he shoves you off the piano bench himself.

"You’re a jerk," you tell him lovingly. "Let me get my book."

"Not before I get my video camera," he insists.

Doesn’t matter how fast you race around the house; with his flash-stepping, he will always get back first. He’s setting up the tripod, testing the lights in the room, checking the white balance, all for a shitty straight-to-YouTube production from the two of you. That’s how obsessed he is with getting it right. One of these days he’ll finally learn that perfection isn’t required. For now, you let him fuss. “Ready, asshole?”

"Which book did you bring?"

"The one from Rose." The girls couldn’t be here for Christmas, but you can at least send them a video message.

"Good. We’ll start at the beginning." He starts the piano jingle, his fingers rolling across the ivories elegantly.

He’s so in earnest you almost crack up and ruin the video before you can even get started. While you read, you pretend like you’re writing a diary entry. “Thank you,” you start out with, “peer pressure, for being totally not cool. Unless Dave thinks it’s cool, then it’s pretty cool I guess.”

Dave stops playing. There’s a little huffing sound. When you look over, his face is contorted, like he forgot how to laugh like he means it. “God damn it,” he chokes out.

It takes you fifty-one takes to film the first ten pages. You call it a day and queue up the Bo Burnham special on Netflix so you can reteach Dave how to laugh properly—which he does, and heartily. God bless us, every one.


	10. pieces form the whole

 

You fall in love with him in pieces.

How his hair sticks up in odd places when he first wakes up in the morning. It curls when he gets out of the shower and then dries into something windswept and wild. Sometimes you can smell his shampoo on your pillow when he’s not sleeping in your bed.

His glasses, the strong black nearly hipster frames of them, the green sheen across them when fluorescent light hits him in the face and brings out the anti-glare of his lenses. They’re the frames you bought him when his old wire frames broke in high school. For a week he was suspicious that his dad wasn’t buying him a replacement pair, but you asked his old man for his prescription and ordered the best goddamn eyewear you could find on the entire internet and the look on his face was enough to last you ten lifetimes when he put them on for the first time. Something kindles between your heart and your stomach when he looks at you through them—the same something you suspect makes his eyes light up when he looks at your shades. A sign of ownership on both your faces.

And when he takes his glasses off, the unabashed boyish sky blue of his peepers, god damn it, the branding burn of an acetylene torch as it scours through you. The glitter in his eyes when he pulls a prank or tells a joke or is just plain happy. Which, for him, is most of the time. You envy him for that. How anything can make him smile.

The goddamn set of his fucking eyebrows, strong and thick and expressive, just under the part of his hair that tumbles across his forehead. You know he manscapes, because one morning you noticed three errant hairs daring to creep across the bridge of his nose and by the afternoon they weren’t there.

The line of his nose. You could photograph him in profile forever. It isn’t sharp, isn’t broad, isn’t hooked—straight and strong and perfect. The hint of a scar that comes down from the bridge just past his nasal ridge on the right side, where someone punched his face as a kindergartner and made his glasses dig in too hard. Sometimes you idly contemplate going back in time and telling that kid in no uncertain terms to stay home from school that day, but then you’d have no excuse for cataloguing the bones of his face in your free time.

The definition of his cupid’s bow before his lips really start. Generous—not thick or thin. The dimple on his left side when he smiles. Just on the left. You’ve checked. How he’s never had orthodontia to fix his buck teeth, and so the rest of his teeth are still just a little crooked as a result. When he smiles and he doesn’t want to, he’ll dig his teeth into his lower lip; there’s a groove there perfectly situated for them now. Sometimes you just want to bite it yourself to keep him from being so damn shy about his optimism. He needs to share. You need to see it sometimes, though you’ll never tell him that.

The rich low tenor of his voice, the thunder of his laughter when it rumbles in his chest. How his adam’s apple moves when he talks. He can make just about anything sound like an inside joke with the way he says it. You’ve caught him singing before—it’s gorgeous. Really. The music he can make with just his throat is astounding. He told you once he doesn’t like to sing, thinks it’s cheating because of his breath powers, but you’ve heard him wailing away in the showers. He could have just about anybody creaming their panties if he just got off his ass and onto the radio waves.

He shaves twice a day most days. His five o’clock shadow usually comes out closer to two. You wish his face weren’t so goddamn perfect. You’ve looked for flaws, but his chin’s just square, nothing more. If there was a buttchin in there maybe you could handle how perfect he is by pointing to that one thing and laughing at it forever, but no. You can’t even have that small solace in looking at him.

You’re blessed to be his roommate. It means you get to see him half-naked. A lot. Oh, god. When you die, bury you on the slopes of his shoulders. Just thinking about his arms with a shovel and the dirt he needs to get out of the way to bury you six feet under makes your mouth water. Biceps. Triceps. Delts. Forearms. How is he even legal. That hammer did beautiful things for him. To him, really.

Hair on guys should look ridiculous. You hate him for wearing it well. His forearms in particular—mostly because you get to see those every day—but his chest, too, all the way down his front. Nothing on his back, because he has to be perfect, except the very little tucked into the small of it, those tiny little hairs you want to pull on with your fingertips to see if you can get a rise out of him that way. Probably could. You wonder how sensitive it is.

Every muscle on him is corded and defined. It’s like he stepped out of a Roman statuary. Except his dick is bigger. A lot bigger. Not that you’ve really seen it, just glimpses and teases, but he tends not to wear briefs to bed under his sleep pants and he walks back from the showers with nothing but a towel around his waist. Your mind fills in the inferences for you and you tend not to ruminate on it for too long lest your mouth start watering and your fingertips start itching. You can imagine, and even that’s too much for you sometimes.

He has the richest skin of anyone you’ve ever met. A deep bronze, sort of. His teeth look blindingly white against it. And it’s all natural, too, none of it is tan—all of him is browned the same. Part of it has to be the First Nations thing, but part of it is just that he has to be devastatingly beautiful in every supernatural way, including looking like a fucking statue. How is that even fair. The few scars he has—bridge of his nose, along his solar plexus, quite a few at his knees—stand out pink against the deep of him. When they stand out like that, you just want to trace them with fingers and tongue. Ugh.

The only mar on him is the tattoo on his right shoulder. Sort of tribal, but he’s part of a tribe, so it’s not as toolish as it might otherwise be. It’s a footprint, sort of, sworls of black ink against the richness of his skin. You didn’t think he was Blackfoot, but maybe that’s part of his heritage. You have no idea, really. He doesn’t really talk about it. You’d ask his dad, but you’re kind of afraid of that dude.

God, his hands. The one part of him you can’t live without. Nimble and quick—you’ve watched him play piano before and you’re still astounded. Dexterous when he needs them for those sorts of passages, but he can form them into these ten little hammers that coax the loudest fortissimo you’ve ever heard out of that instrument. He’s broken strings before, he told you sheepishly once, and for some reason that made your dick go ping because you’re pretty much wired completely wrong.

And fuck you if it’s not just his body. It’s the way he acts around other people. How he’ll drop everything and go help his boyfriend if he so much as hints something isn’t completely perfect in his life. How he entreats  _your_  boyfriend—that he doesn’t even know you’re dating—to take better care of himself, to care about himself the way he cares about him. The way he insists on taking care of  _you_ , taking it upon himself to be the dad you never had and doting on you when all you want to do is simultaneously shove him away and hug him until you don’t feel like you’re spinning to pieces any more.

He tries so hard with everyone for every reason. He studies hard for his classes just to make the grades you make when you’re not paying attention. But even though he may not be book smart, he’s definitely people smart. He sees tensions between people you didn’t even know were possible. Something about seeing breath makes him see the animus behind what people do, which makes him possibly the best friendleader there ever was.

That, too. You’d follow him. Anywhere. Off a fucking cliff. To your own doom. Maybe he’s right, and one of these days you won’t wake up after you die, but hell. You’d fucking do it, not just voluntarily but gladly, if it meant he would be unharmed. He deserves better than the hand life dealt him and you’d do pretty much anything to stack the deck a different way so he can live a normal life after everything that’s happened.

And the way he looks at you. Says ‘I love you’ even if not in so many words. Says ‘I love you’ like that, even, like it’s the easiest thing in the world to treat you like you’re a permanent part of his life. Sleeps in your bed to hold you down when all you want to do is stay awake, agitated, and work yourself to death. Hugs you when he knows you weren’t taught to do that as a child, making you learn how to embrace a friend, someone as much a part of you as a sword to your hands. Tries to tell you you’re worth more than you value yourself, even when he knows you won’t believe him.

But if he’s an unstoppable force, you’re an immovable object. He has a boyfriend—hell,  _you_  have a boyfriend, and it chafes you every day that you can’t have everything that you want. That you’ve had to set aside anything other than the tentative, too-deep sort of friendship he insists on, just to keep from making things worse. But you’re already so far in that you don’t see a way out. You’ve forgotten how to breathe when it’s not him in your lungs.

Maybe one day you’ll be able to cut free, but it’s not that easy. He’s not just yours—he’s you. A part of you. Naturally intrinsic. You can’t do without him. Maybe that’s the part that scares you most of all. Not just that you care about him, but that you need him. And losing him would mean losing your life.

You fall in love with him in pieces, because he’s greater than the sum of his parts and you can’t handle him whole.


	11. Chapter 11

"You had a weird dream last night," Dave says, shifting next to you on the bed.

"I did not," you deny, and stare pointedly into your coffee. When you poured the milk in, it made a heart shape at the top. You have no idea how that happened but you want to learn how to do it the right way.

The lump of blankets next to you shifts again and a blond head pops out. “You had a weird dream last night,” he repeats, “and I know, because you brought me coffee.”

"Okay, fine. I had a weird dream." You weren’t planning to dwell on it.

Dave sits up against the headboard next to you, shirtless plane of pale skin practically reflecting whatever little sunlight is sneaking in through the drawn curtains. While he obnoxiously rubs at one of his eyes, he reaches for his coffee—espresso, two shots, fat-free half-and-half, and three sugars, just the way he likes it. “Y’wanna talk about it?”

"No." That’s a lie. You do, but not with Dave. Not even with Sollux—he’d laugh at you, just like Dave would, tell you you’re being stupid and then ask you to join a Halo 2 multiplayer map so he could kick your ass. Karkat would be your first choice, but he’s out of town for some kind of management conference for his consulting firm. It still feels weird only having three people around the house instead of four.

Dave nudges your foot with his under the covers. “Come on. Tell me.”

"Are you sure?" Sure, Karkat’s been really good for Dave over the years, gotten him to be more soft and sympathetic instead of hard-edged and practical all the time, but you had no idea Karkat had been able to convince Dave it’s good to talk about feelings and shit. Which, it is, but Dave? Nah. No way.

"Yeah, ‘m sure," Dave mumbles into his coffee.

You swallow. Scratch the back of your head. Everything is blurry without your glasses. “It’s really weird.”

"More like you’re really weird."

You punch him in the shoulder. Gently. Doesn’t even rock the bed. You don’t want him spilling coffee all over himself, after all. “Do you ever wake up and just realize that your life went in a totally different direction than you thought it would ten years ago?”

"Tell me about it," Dave grumbles, "I’m putting up with the three of you faggots instead of moving out to L.A. and schlepping it up with Dr. Dre."

"See, I knew you’d laugh." You take another sip of coffee. Perfectly creamy and sweet, just the way you like it. Caffeine buzzes across your tongue.

"No, no, seriously, I," trying to repair the damage, and he looks at you. Really looks at you, red eyes framed by pale eyelashes glimmering in the dawn sunlight, and he could get you to do anything when he looks at you like that and he  _knows it_ , the bastard. “Lay it on me.”

"You’re not gonna like it."

"I don’t like most of the shit that comes out of your mouth."

"I was married to your sister."

That shuts him the hell up. “Really,” he says to his mug instead.

"Yeah." And it had felt so real, too, in the dream, and waking up to this life was disorienting and even a little nauseating. "It was like—ten years ago, when we were fifteen and I was trying to date her and stuff. That’s what I thought life was gonna be like when I grew up and got serious and all that. I thought I was gonna marry her."

"And you’re stuck with us three bozos instead," Dave says in a flat tone.

"You’re not bozos, and if you won’t let me finish my story then I won’t frickin’ tell it, okay?" Once again, the way to get Dave to be quiet is to withhold things he wants. "She and I were married—it was like we’re how old we are now, y’know, like we grew up and started to act like adults and we’d been married for three years or something—"

"You’re 25 and you’d been married for three years?"

"You sound surprised." If you stopped to think about it, maybe you’d reflect on how much you’re becoming your dad as you grow into who you really are, but it’s too early in the morning to ruminate on that right now. As it is, you’ve always been kind of a softie. Huge teddy bear, really. And when you were fifteen you thought you’d grow up and get married right away because that’s just what adults  _do_. “And she—we. She was pregnant? I think. But we already had a little girl and she was like two years old or something.”

"What was her name?"

"Sorry?"

"What was her name," Dave asks again. "Your girl."

"Cassandra, but everybody called her—"

"Casey," Dave finishes your sentence for you, and rolls his eyes even as he smiles. "You’re so predictable, Egbert."

"It was perfect for her, though!" Yes, you’re ready to argue this point. Casey is a perfectly fine name and you won’t let Dave dissuade you from that. "She had Rose’s hair, this fine blonde hair, and these baby-blue eyes, and she was missing two of her teeth when she smiled at me and I just. Y’know?" Probably not, but it’s hard to describe the way you felt when you looked at the daughter you had in your dream. Like your heart was too big for your chest, like your ribs had unzippered and your feelings were about to spill out of your body and onto the floor.

"Did you name the other one yet?"

"I think so." The further away from the dream you get, the harder it is to remember. "It was a boy, I remember that much. And I wanted to call him Nicolas but then Rose reminded me that you’d just call him Nak all the time and…"

"And?" Finally perks up once he’s mentioned. You see how it is.

"And I woke up."

Dave deflates. “That’s a bullshit dream.”

"Tell me about it, it’s freaking me out a little." Not because you wouldn’t have liked any of that stuff! What’s freaking you out is that—you would have liked it. You would have liked it a lot. And if things had worked out just a little differently, that could be your life right now. Married to a gorgeous, talented woman in a house with a white picket fence and a Honda Civic in the driveway, one daughter and a son on the way. Husband and father. Casey called you ‘daddy’ and you melted.

"No, I mean, that wasn’t," Dave starts out with, then shakes his head before taking another sip of coffee. "I don’t think that was a dream, bro."

"Then what the hell was it?"

"Alternate timeline shenanigans." Your stomach turns. When you look at Dave, he just shrugs. "Sburb residue, or that’s what Lalonde says, anyway. Didn’t know it happened to anyone else, though."

"Anyone else?"

"Yeah, happens to me all the time."

"You were a Time player, though," you point out. "Makes sense for you to get the bleedover, because that’s what you did. But you’re saying," you want to get this straight, "that—that was me. That was literally me."

"In an alternate timeline, yeah."

You stare pointedly at the doorway to your bedroom. “Huh,” you sigh out, and take another sip of coffee.

"Just one of ‘em, though," Dave keeps trying to explain. "I mean, there’s one where it’s you and me instead of you and her."

Okay, maybe this dream isn’t as crap as you thought it was. “You’re kidding.”

"Nah, not kidding. I broke up with Karkat and you broke up with Sollux and we tried living with other roommates but it never worked out so we bought a house together and started doing the dating thing all backwards. Or that was one of them, I think the other one I saw was we never started dating those goobers in the first place and just started fucking our first night of college."

"They’re not goobers," you defend them.

"They’re not," Dave agrees, "and it’s not like I’m unhappy or anything? It’s just—"

"—weird," you finish the sentence for him, "seeing what your life could have been like."

Both of you sit and stare at your coffees for a little bit. You alternate sips. Other than the weird feelings jam going on right now, this is just like any other Saturday morning. “The weirdest one, though,” Dave volunteers—he never volunteers, must need to get this off his chest, “is the one with Jade.”

You sling your arm across the headboard. Your fingertips are trailing along Dave’s shoulder. Comfortable kind of sharing space. “Okay, I gotta hear this one.”

"She and I were married—no, not like I was chasing her, asshole,  _she_  was chasing  _me_ , like a goddamn dog with a bone.”

"Wish I coulda seen that." You smile into your coffee.

"It was easier than she thought," Dave admits. "For some reason—and I don’t remember what you did, just that you did something? I don’t know. I was angry and upset and—and heartbroken, I guess, and—"

"Sorry."

"What?"

"Sorry. Sounds like alternate me was a dick."

"You now is a dick." You kick his shin under the blankets. "Ow!"

"No, seriously, though. Sorry."

"Yeah, you were being kind of a douche." Dave swirls his coffee around in his mug. "Something about how you couldn’t be friends with me if you knew I had a crush on you all that time and you not being gay at the least whatsoever."

You whistle through your teeth. “Jesus. I am really, really sorry—I. That’s awful, I shouldn’t’ve—”

"Relax, dumbass," and Dave leans his head on your arm lazily, "it didn’t happen."

"Yeah, but it could’ve, and I—I’m really glad I wasn’t like that. With you. Ever."

"Me too, man. Me fuckin’ too." Dave takes another sip of his bev. "But Jade, she was—she was great, really nice and, y’know. That whole taught me how to love again stereotype. But we got married way too young, and she wanted kids, and I didn’t, and there was this big blow-up fight about it, and then she—"

"Don’t hold out on me, dude," you tell him when he won’t finish his sentence.

"Cheated on me." You want to say ‘that bitch,’ but that’s your sister, so you’re deeply conflicted here. "With Karkat." You can  _hear_  the raw betrayal in Dave’s voice—Knights as a class are all about loyalty, and that must have cut him deep.

"Holy shit." You don’t have much coffee left at this point. "Guess that ended it."

"In one version of the story." Dave’s face twists into a sardonic smile and he huffs out what’s probably an attempt at a chuckle. "The other one is that we leave it an open marriage and pretty much invite Karkat to live with us."

"That’s cool, though!" The whole working it out with the poly thing, anyway.

"Sort of. He and I hadn’t ever done anything at that point, so it was just awkward. And then he got her pregnant or something."

"Where was I during all of this?"

"Cambodia." You nearly shoot coffee out your nose. Dave’s deadpan is always perfect. "No, it was. If things could’ve gotten worse at that point, you made it worse, ‘cause I—we were best friends and I married your sister and all that shit so I went to you for help?"

"After I broke your heart or whatever."

"And we slept together. Yeah," he says to your look of shock. "We both got blitzed and you called a no homo and we did the full dicks-in-buttholes sex and then you pretended like you didn’t even remember, you were just so drunk, there’s no way you would have done anything like that because you were straight as a spaghetti noodle, bluh bluh bluh."

"Dude." You set your mug down on the little table you have shoved up between your bed and the wall. "Tell me I’m not that much of a dick to you right now, here, like, in real life."

"Are you kidding me?" Dave runs his foot up the side of your calf. His toes are cold. "You’re too nice. You’re—" and this part’s a little quieter, "you’re too good for me."

"Not true," you insist, but you pull Dave closer so you can stick your nose in his ear and kiss him on the cheek anyway. "I’m just. I’m really glad, y’know?"

"That it worked out like this."

"Yeah." Completely honest. “‘Cause I—I couldn’t even imagine—you, and Sollux, and Karkat, and everybody, and I—"

"Don’t start fagging out on me," Dave mock-threatens you, and you blow a raspberry on his neck.


End file.
